NEW YORK — Shohei Ohtani hit his second postseason home run to give the Los Angeles Dodgers three late insurance runs in the 8-0 victory to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead in the National League Championship Series.
Ohtani, who entered the game 0-for-19 with no runners on base, extended his bases-empty drought by going hitless with a walk in his first four plate appearances of the game.
With two on in the eighth inning, Ohtani hit a towering home run just inside the right-field foul pole for his second homer of the postseason. Ohtani is now 7-for-9 with runners on base this October, including two home runs.
Kiké Hernández makes his latest October entry
Kiké Hernández sparked the f-bomb-filled mantra that the Dodgers said fueled them to a comeback in the NLDS against the Padres, and it was Hernández whose home run in Game 5 of that series opened up a Dodgers advantage they wouldn’t surrender.
“I kept telling myself, they brought you here for a reason,” Hernández said that night. “They brought you here to play in October. I wanted to come back to make a run with this team because I really want to have a parade.”
Hernández’s latest moment, and his 15th career postseason homer, came in the sixth. The Dodgers were clinging to a two-run lead, with a thorny section of the Mets lineup due up. After Tommy Edman lined a two-out single to right and advanced on a balk, Hernández took advantage of a mistake. Reed Garrett left a two-strike splitter up and over the plate. Hernández did not miss it, cutting enough through the cold New York night for a two-run shot that doubled the Dodgers’ advantage and allowed the club to continue rolling out its leverage arms with some breathing room.
Quiet bats reduce the Mets’ margin for error
The Mets were shut out for the second time in three games this series, held down by the inconsistent Walker Buehler and the go-to arms of the Los Angeles bullpen.
New York had its share of opportunities early against Buehler. The second inning, in particular, loomed large. After the Dodgers pushed across a pair of unearned runs, the Mets loaded the bases with one out. But Francisco Alvarez, deep in an October slump, struck out looking and Francisco Lindor struck out swinging at a 3-2 curveball.
Alvarez is 1-for-9 in the series, which doesn’t sound too bad until you consider the context of those at-bats. In the last two games alone, he’s hitless in at-bats with:
- Runners on second and third and one out
- The bases loaded and two outs
- Runners on first and second and two outs
- The bases loaded with one out
That offensive silence made the Mets’ defensive miscues in that second inning stand out all the more. Los Angeles scored on a walk and three balls in play that traveled a combined 36 feet, aided by an Alvarez error and Luis Severino’s inability to come up with a pair of comebackers cleanly.
Buehler finds some swing-and-miss at the right time
It’s not hard to decipher the difference between the second innings of each of Buehler’s two postseason starts. In the second inning of Game 3 of the NLDS against the San Diego Padres, Buehler reached six different two-strike counts: he recorded only one out on them. He finished the night with no strikeouts in a start for just the second time in his career. The Padres, the best contact team in the majors, put the ball in play. The Dodgers’ defense bungled the inning behind him, leading to six runs.
Buehler found something else on Wednesday night. Relying on a heavy diet of sweepers and curveballs, he extracted more swing-and-miss than he has in any start since returning on May 6 from a second Tommy John surgery. That proved enough, particularly on a night when he lacked his typical command. Buehler threw only 51 strikes on his 90 pitches over four scoreless innings but managed to get 18 whiffs — his most this season — and six strikeouts.
None were more important than in the second inning. As the Mets loaded the bases on a pair of walks and an infield single that Edman couldn’t handle, Buehler buckled down. He froze Francisco Alvarez looking with a fastball that caught the outer half of the plate, then ended a seven-pitch battle against Mets superstar Francisco Lindor with a curveball that the shortstop could only wave through to end the threat.
The two scoreless innings that followed set up a rested Dodgers bullpen with a two-run advantage, ideal circumstances for Los Angeles.
(Photo of Shohei Ohtani: Luke Hales / Getty Images)
